Sound quality wise the iPod does need some work (I've noticed differences when listening to a song straight from itunes on my comp as opposed to when i listen on my iPod and when i switched over from a creative 16gb to my ipod 80gb i noticed a decline in sound quality too).

However, iPod has the huge advantage of giving having players with a lot more space than the other brands out there which is why it ultimately won out for me

"are you a fucktard? all music players are hard drives with a basic interface. who gives a shit what
company it is."
Stop getting so agressive all the time....
iPods have inferior sound quality, I can tell from experience. Many people know that, there are even
sites to accuse the popularity of the iPod amonst music lovers.

Yeah, tell me to quit being aggressive then link me to a website of butthurt consumers. The bottom line is the root problem of quality is the source itself. The differences in playback are minute at best. But maybe you have the hearing of a dog or something.

Even if you don't notice the quality from the player itself, iPods don't have a fully customizable
Equalizer. Which is very important. Especially if you want to get the most out of those expensive
headphones...

I only really noticed the difference between my computer and my ipod recently since i've actually gotten a pair of pretty nice headphones (klipsh image over ear) and there most certainly is a difference (on itunes i can easily listen to dubstep with the bass boost on and it sound terrific however on the ipod i have to keep the EQ to normal or none or whatever because it can't seem to handle its own bass boost)

Yeah, of course you'll only notice it with some premium headphones. It's an often made misconception that all music will sound better with expensive headphones. If your source or player has low quality the headphones will intensify these aspects as well.

I wouldn't go as far as saying the music doesn't sound better but I know it definitely doesn't allow me to take full advantage of what the headphones are capable of.

Same goes in the car. With my creative mp3 i would always max the volume on the mp3 then use the car sound sytem to control how loud i actually wanted it. When i did the same with my ipod it sounded pretty terrible and I had to lower the volume on the ipod and put it higher on the car to even it out